Second Choices
by Scooter127
Summary: "They both know, they know that just because they're together now doesn't mean they're supposed to be. It's all about second choices." Finn/Santana Puck/Quinn. Oneshot. Based off Hiding My Love For You by Little Sass


The day Quinn sees Santana home from the hospital holding a baby, something inside her twists. She calls in sick at work and sits on the kitchen floor, eating her weight in sadness and carbohydrates but she doesn't shed a single tear until Noah comes home, and sits next to her, holds her hand. His legs stretch out all over the place and he used to have a way of making her feel safe, a long time ago, but now, now she can't feel anything with him. She cries and he just holds her, but he doesn't ask what's wrong. They both know, they know that just because they're together now doesn't mean they're supposed to be. It's all about second choices.

It began differently in high school. Santana __never __would have been Finn 's first choice. He knows she loved Noah sometime in high school. She spent her days with Noah and her nights with Finn . He didn't care she was using him, he was too drunk on Quinn for it to matter, she was __his __first choice. But then Quinn made it clear she was __in__ love with Noah, and Noah made it clear he was __in__ love with Quinn, and Santana and Finn fell into a second pattern of sleepless days and nights, trying to forget.

Junior year, Santana woke up next to him and never left, giggling non-stop with tousled raven colored hair, and he's never wanted somebody else since. He brushes her hair back from her eyes every night and sees her, really __sees__ her, and she grins and steals all the covers. They finish each other's sentences and they know each other better than they know themselves and they dance together in the living room; their children peek out from by the staircase and swoon at the romance of it __all.__

Santana's never doubted she's spending her happily ever after with the right boy, even years __years__ later. She may have wanted Noah originally but she hit every milestone with Finn . The first kiss was while they were drunk on champagne after Chuck Bass' famous blow out party,, the first time she saw Noah holding Quinn's hand, she feigned sick for the first time and came home. Minutes later, Finn came with ice cream, and and her favorite movie, and they spent the day in bed for the first time. The first best kiss was when they realized there __is__ no one else. It's his hand she wants to hold __everywhere__, everywhere since she first learned what home really is, the hand she __never__ wants to let go of.

The first time they spent the summer together. it's __just__ them, Finn and Santana, no interruptions, and all the wonderful summer things that they love. They spend some time in New York city, and then when that gets too hot, they go to the Hamptons. When they get bored of the Hamptons, they head back get high and wasted, they go out to breakfast together with messy hair, wearing dark sunglasses, and leave twenty-dollar tips entirely in quarters just because they can. They stay up until the sun rises and they dance on Finn's bed in their underwear and watch movies on his big-screen TV and splash around in his hot tub. and one day she wakes up to find a present sitting by the bed and discovers that he's bought her a scarf of her own; __so you can stop stealing mine, bitch__.

Noah isn't as stupid as everyone believes. He notices the changes between everyone then, how Quinn darkens in a room when Finn walks in holding Santana's hand, his thumb circling her palm, tracing hearts. He sees the looks his __best__ friend sneaks her when she isn't looking, the way his arm circles her waist, the way he kisses the side of her forehead __just __because he can. He assumes its' a phase they're going through, they can't __be__ serious. They're the worst couple, they argue and fight; they never agree on anything and between the two of them, there's __always __some kind of temper tantrum. But the days pass, he serenades her in Glee, the weeks, they kiss __everywhere__, the weeks turn into months, she's wearing his shirts, scarves and sweaters, and the relationship doesn't end.

That spring day Santana ran down from the bleachers, her hair flying everywhere behind her, she was running and running, she was __flying__, and Noah was sure she was __finally__ running to him, she woke up to her senses, she was__the __one, when he blinked and she was hugging the wrong boy, all __over__ again. He's never been jealous of his best friend, not until the day __the __girl picked the __other__ boy.

High school comes and goes, the four graduate and the happy photographs hide everything underneath. They keep in touch for college, ignoring the lingering awkwardness. Two years after graduation, the four of them take a weekend away together in the summer house, and everyone is happy; it __almost__ feels like old times. Until Finn surprises her one morning and proposes on the sand and she didn't let him get in a __single__ word, and just jumped and kept saying __yes.__ She toppled him on the sand, and Noah and Quinn clap and smile, and once back at the house, they claim work engagements and family problems, and other excuses and catch the first train away, away from the fairy tale they're never going to live. They can't bear to watch the happiness they're never going to be a part of.

The day Santana and Finn have their engagement party, the foursome reunite again; all four have smiles but only two are genuine. Quinn tries to kiss Finn during the party, when she corners him in the kitchen, and whispers if he ever thinks of her, if he'd go back and change anything, and he looks at her, like he doesn't __even__ know her, and he walks back to his fiancée, he walks home to Santana because he's marrying __her__. Noah and Quinn plaster their fake smiles long enough until the last guest leaves and the night ends, and proceed to drink enough alcohol, separately, to stay hungover for a week. It's enough to dull them emotionally but its' never enough to dull the reality of the situation. Alcohol covers the lies for only so long.

Later that year, Noah is Finn's best man, __of course__, and the day she walks down the aisle to someone else, he pretends it's him she's walking to. She's barefoot on the beach sand, the same sand where someone __else__ proposed, and she's smiling, she has the grin that makes him stumble __every __time he sees it. He imagines the white picket fence and the soccer rehearsals, the little girl with her mom's eyes and the twins with their dad's smile, the grumpy cat, the home they could build. He wants to say something to stop this but he __can't__, and he doesn't, and when Finn kisses her 'I do', actually marries Santana, Noah wakes up long enough for something inside him to die.

The wedding is beautiful, and the toasts make everyone cry. Finn sweeps Santana for their first dance, and his hand is in hers, like it's been there all along, and there's __something__ about them that no one can describe. Noah dances with Quinn at the reception for old times sake, he doesn't feel anything with her hand in his but come the end of the night, he asks her out anyway. They date and date but he doesn't propose marriage until he's sure there's no alternative, that Santana and Finn are not getting a divorce anytime soon, not when they love each other as much as they do.

When Quinn walks down that aisle, she imagines it's to the best man, not to the groom. She glances at Finn out of the corner of her eye, and he doesn't make eye contact, he wasn't __even__ looking at her walk. She focuses back on Noah and wonders how to spend __forever__ with the wrong one. She makes it to the front of the church and Noah is looking at her, and she sees Finn behind him making eye contact with her maid of honor, and she pretends that smile was for her, not for his wife behind __her__, and she makes it through the ceremony with flying colors. Noah kisses her at the appropriate time and Quinn forces herself to kiss back, convincing herself, this is what she's __always__ wanted, this is __who __she's always wanted.

Noah watched Quinn come down the aisle that day, she was beautiful, and blonde and she has an edge Santana doesn't replicate. She's supposed to have been the one since high school, since when they were attending football games and he was winning and she was cheering, when they walked through the school like leaders, when he threw paper airplanes at her in Spanish but sometimes, she doesn't feel like __the__ one. The next day, the next morning he wakes up next to a head of blonde hair, and he's disappointed its' not _hers._ He rolls over to the other side and he wonders where Santana is, and if she's happy as she looks, as everyone says she is.

Months later, the day of Hudson housewarming party; three kids later, they__had__ to move, Quinn catches Santana and Finn trying to christen __their__ kitchen counter, she stammers an apology and locks herself in the nearest bathroom and vomits for an hour. The moment she thinks there's nothing more to come, she's blindsided when it rises to the top and the cycle starts again. She can't stop the projector playing in her head, the way Santana's legs are wrapped around Finn , the way his hand touched her face, he's __still__ so in love with her after all these years, and she wonders where it all went wrong, why she let him go when she __had__ him.

The next day, she learns she's pregnant and Noah says all the right things and makes all the right midnight runs, but she catches looks from him sometimes, but she shakes her head and pretends its' not real. She's perfected the art of pretending, just like in high school when she stayed with Noah because it was safer.

The four grow, and they build families and homes, and two learn sometimes its' best to pretend. They spend a lifetime together, the four of them, as friends and they were __so__ lucky to find each other, but not lucky enough to end up with the right one.


End file.
